Movie trailers today also ruin good plots in movies. Some of the funniest lines of movies are spoiled in movie trailers. Some of the best movie twists are spoiled in movie trailers. With some movies, if you’ve seen enough trailers about the movie all you need a 5 second clip to tell you the ending and you have no reason to see it, because all the characters are introduced, the plot is given away, and sometimes even the ending protagonist and antagonist fight if shown. Guess what 95% of the time the protagonist wins. You can also guess the ending of a movie because basic plots are recycled over and over again. Take the movie Avatar as an example. James Cameron said that he worked on the plot for Avatar for 12 years. From just the trailers I saw of it I could tell someone the rough idea of the plot. Boy is part of an organization, boy gets separated from organization, boy meets girl, girl teaches boy how bad the organization is, organization tries to kill girl’s people, girl’s people blame boy, boy fights organization to win back the love of girl, boy wins and everyone lives happily ever after. I knew all that before I saw the movie because I grew up with movies like Pocahontas and Furn Gully.
Ok here’s what this rant is coming from, I have tried to stay in media blackout over the movie Inception. The keyword there was tried. I watched the first teaser trailer and knew that that movie would be an awesome movie if I see nothing else about it. That’s hard to do when I’m watching TV and a trailer comes on, and I quickly start digging for the remote, and Leo says the word dream just before I change channels. FUCK! Why? Why was that in the trailers? Why ruin the plot of a potentially great movie? To me that’s like putting that Bruce Willis is dead in the trailer for the Sixth Sense. I don’t know, maybe there’s something bigger in the movie Inception. I’ll know more when I see it, but I feel like the movie has been ruined for me. I just wish that trailers showed a lot less of movies and television shows than they do. </rant>
I think movie piracy is partialy to blame. In a last ditch effort to get as many people as they can markenting execs try to show people all the cool stuff, but fail to build a sense of wonder and mystery.
I think the one movie I feel kind of ruined itself for me with a trailer was Terminator 2. Don’t get me wrong its a great movie and I love it but I wish the mystery of who the good Terminator and who the bad one was had been preserved for me to find out on my own.
With the case of Inception I have a good feeling that just knowing dreams have something to do with it won’t ruin the film…at least I hope.
Also would point out some movies have the very end in the trailers. Look at Quarantine. Showed the main character die in the trailer.. Pretty bad.. And as far as Avatar goes: It was just a tech demo for Cameron’s 3D cameras.. Looked AMAZING in 3D, but it was Pocahontas in space..
Also next time just stick your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and go “lalalalalalalalalala” for about a minute and you will be fine 😉
You’re not wrong. Pretty much all of Jonah Hex was told in the trailer, and it’s not just movies, either. I remember seeing a trailer for FFVII that showed Aerith’s death, so when I met her in the game I kind of just wrote her off, instead of building that great attachment that should’ve happened.